Well, hello there!

[egalgirl]

My name is Leanne. I am a 33 year-old children's pastor in a semi-conservative church [where I really don't fit in well, but I love Jesus and I love kids, and I try to tune out the rest of the crap!] in the Midwest.

I found No Longer Quivering while doing a little bit of reading on this movement. We have a group of hard-core homeschoolers in our church who are in love with Vision Forum, Voddie Baucham, courting, and all the rest - one small example: my husband got his head bitten off by one of the moms for referring to her sons as "teenage boys." Because there are no teenagers in the Bible...

Anyway - I started reading up more on patriarchy/quiverfull/all that jazz to learn more about what exactly I was dealing with, and I found this site. Scary stuff [the movement, not No Longer Quivering ;D].

As my name implies, my husband and I are proud egalitarians - we strongly believe that the "submission" spoken of in the Bible is mutual submission and respect, and we believe that God gives us gifts and talents without regard to gender. No kids yet, but we have taken steps toward trying. One reason of many that we feel like we don't quite fit in with conservative Christianity - we married young [we were high school sweethearts who decided to marry after college], but chose not to even think about having babies until our early 30s...

Anyway, I have enjoyed reading all of your stories, and look forward to getting to know you better!!!

[kiery]

Welcome!!!!

I'd imagine waiting until your 30's would be considered odd with those homeschool families, but I think it's really smart. It's a good decision, so don't let the big homeschool families get to you about it.

Sorry about the head biting. It's weirder when you hear 12 year olds going around saying "I'm not going to be a teenager, I'm a young adult!!" Then the parents would give sermons to everyone about how the teenager wasn't invented until this century and all that. Anyway, it's nothing personal, they're just trying to educate people, I guess. What you don't know is that chances are they refer to themselves as teenagers at home, at least we did. Just publicly, we were "young adults" because we couldn't seem _worldly_ (or do youth group activities, because it's "a love fest with Jesus sprinkled on top").

[kiery]

Also, you're our 500th member!!! *throws party*

[xara]

Welcome.

[Hillary]

From one egal-gal to another, welcome!!!! ;D

[Vyckie D. Garrison]

Welcome, egalgirl ~ and congratulations on being NLQ's 500th member! Nice to have you here.

I'm actually working on putting together a Take Heart Project brochure for pastors which will explain what QF is, a list of warning signs that a couple might be heading down the QF path, an explanation of why this is a very bad thing, and suggestions for how to counsel the couple ~ hopefully to prevent the family from getting deeply involved.

And, yeah ~ the "teenager" thing ...

[egalgirl]

Something like that would be awesome - I told my pastor some of the things I had found out about this whole mindset, and he had no idea how extreme their beliefs are. I think a lot of pastors don't - as has been discussed here numerous times, it is an attractive-looking package on the outside....

[dangermom]

Hello!